About Me

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Moab is my Washpot

Just finished reading (yesterday, but whatever) the first twenty years in the life of Stephen Fry, titled, incomprehensibly, Moab is my Washpot. I still have yet to find out what that's supposed to mean. *Looks it up on Wikipedia* Oh, it's a biblical reference. But it is never referred to in the text of the book, so I guess one would have to be slightly biblically aware in order to understand it. Well anyway. I'm a big fan of all things Stephen Fry, so it's no wonder I enjoyed the read. There's a lot of autobiographicalness to his book The Liar, which I had read previously, so I occasionally felt like I was re-reading. Generally, there was a lot touching on the British public and prep school system (where public = private, I know, it's very British of them, isn't it?), which I found quite interesting - it being a completely different world than anything I have or probably ever will experience. It's neat to read about such things. Plus, of course, I really enjoy Fry's way with words, and unapologetic use of his extensive vocabulary.

Must say, some bits of the text were occasionally hard to follow. Fry has a tendency to hop around on tangents in the middle of a particular bit of story, which makes for a bit of a brain-mushing read, if you're not paying close enough attention. Which, sad to say, I have an occasional tendency to do. This was one of the first books I've read in a while where I felt like I had to carefully read each word of a paragraph in order to get the whole meaning of it. In many books I have the ability to skim things quite quickly and still get the message into my brain.

Anyway, verdict is that you should read it only if you're interested in a look at the British public school system in general, and Stephen Fry in specific. I found it fascinating, but generally autobiographies of funny people are quite to my taste (read Bill Bryson's stuff, too!).